


Where I Remain

by azure7539



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-23 15:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6120517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azure7539/pseuds/azure7539
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If I could rewrite our story,<br/>
I’d erase our names from history,<br/>
and carve them into stone instead. </p>
<p>I’d rather us be forgotten together,<br/>
than remembered apart."</p>
<p>—<i>You'd fall and I'd jump</i> | via P.D</p>
<p> </p>
<p>James Bond wakes up to find himself in an unfamiliar future. Nearly so.</p>
<p>Or the one where Bond tries to cope after learning that nearly half of his body has been replaced with mechanical parts... and that perhaps Q is no longer the Q he knows.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>(Poem's source: <a href="http://lostcap.tumblr.com/post/103494182883/if-i-could-rewrite-our-story-id-erase-our-names">Here</a>)</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LauraRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LauraRose/gifts).



> **Warning:** Unbeta-ed! So all errors are my own.
> 
> **A/N:** My first independent 00Q work. Enjoy, everyone! Feedback are much appreciated :D
> 
> Many thanks to the wonderful LauraRose, who got me into this lovely fandom in the first place!

**_PROLOGUE_ **

* * *

 

_**I.** _

 

The feeling was that he thought he was either floating through space or water—neither of which was possible, to be honest, and that much he knew.

However, what he didn’t understand was this: no matter what he did, he couldn’t open his eyes; he couldn’t move a single muscle.

Was he dead? He asked himself. There was light on the other side of his eyelids, that was one of the other things he knew, and he couldn’t remember having encountered anything of this nature, despite having courting Death for as long as he had been in the business that he was in.

So, was this Hell, then? He didn’t know; he had never quite believed in Hell, after all. However, if it were, this was quite an annoying Hell.

That was his last conscious thought before he sank lower down into whatever environment he was pseudo-floating inside.

 

_**II.** _

 

The next time he woke up—or became conscious of himself and his ‘state’, to be more precise—he could feel something warm and soothing wrapping around his left hand.

His body twitched. Supposedly so.

But that was it before he was gone again, back to wherever he kept drifting off into.

 

_**III.**_  

 

He had strange dreams . . . fragments of memory sewn into one chain, almost continuous.

At first, those dreams were full of familiar faces. Dead faces. Of blood, fire, smoke, screams (blood curdling, maniacal, torturous, screeching screams), gunshots, explosions, more blood. And repeat.

They were painful.

They ripped his lungs out, choked his throat, and squeezed his heart.

But gradually, they receded. Still there, but never quite haunting the forefront of his brain as much as before.

Distantly, he thought he felt something brushing over his brows and carding through his hair, but it was that bit too far away for him to catch.

Always too far away.

 

_**IV.** _

 

He was starting to think this wasn’t quite a dream, or death, or anything at all anymore.

He was starting to think this was actually his reality.

And that was a frightening thought, at least he allowed himself that much. Not that there was anyone else here in this place whom he could tell that admission to now. . . .

Was there?

 

_**V.** _

 

The warmth was there again. The touches sometimes fleeting, sometimes lingering.

Who are you? He asked.

But no answer ever came forth. Just as how he could never get his finger to lift up or any of his toe to move.

 

_**VI.** _

 

Sometimes, he thought he could hear something. If he could, he would furrow his brows at the thought.

That melody could may as well be coming from inside his own mind.

Even so, the thing was that . . . he was rather positively sure he had never heard that melody before, ever, in his life—in his life before the ‘Void’, that is.

 

_**VII.** _

 

There were times where it wasn’t a melody that he heard, but rather, a voice. His stomach felt a phantom clenching sensation. An inkling hunch told him that he knew that voice, that voice that was saying, reading, something to him.

But he couldn’t get his eyes to open. He couldn’t.

 

_**VIII.** _

 

He tried asking again. He thought he could feel his mouth twitch; he thought he could hear himself voice the question that had been curling in the cavity of his chest—left brewing for so long it nearly physically ached.

But that was just him fooling himself. How could he do _any_ of those things when the only thing he could do was bloody  _breathing_? And Hell, that wasn’t even a conscious act.

 

_**IX.** _

 

The warmth came and went. Frequently in between, or otherwise. But it always came, always. Undoubtedly so.

 

_**X.** _

 

Until it didn’t anymore, and his left hand tried, in sheer vain, to grasp the empty cold air.


	2. Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "  
>  His hands are tangled in the sun and he should leave burn marks where his fingertips linger. He doesn’t.
> 
> But sometimes you look to him, and know to your bones that you won’t come out of this whole.
> 
> "
> 
> — _It never matters how far you run, your scarred skin holds his memory_ | P.D
> 
> –
> 
> His presence lingers everywhere.
> 
>  
> 
> **(Poem's source:[ Here](http://lostcap.tumblr.com/post/129237009523/his-hands-are-tangled-in-the-sun-and-he-should))**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** still unbeta-ed
> 
> Part 1 here to expand on the Prologue. Enjoy, everyone! Read and review :D

_**Part 1** _

* * *

_**Entry 1** _

 

Bond woke up with a gasp as though he had just emerged from the bottom of the sea, broken through the water, and managed to somehow reach the surface. The erratic sound of something beeping wormed into his ears, and there were hands on his body, gloved hands that he did not like.

“Mr. Bond. Mr. Bond!” Muffled voices, and the light was too bright and piercing for him not to wince and shut his eyes closed.

“Calm down, Mr. Bond!”

It took him a while before he realized that annoyingly persistent, mechanical sound came from a heart monitor that was wired to his person.

His lungs hurt—perhaps from finally being able to breathe properly and expand to their fullest possible capacity—and so did his right arm and legs. The pain was searing, almost as if it burnt into his very flesh and bone.

There were still people trying to hold him down.

“No choice. Sedate him. Now!”

 

* * *

 

_**Entry 2** _

 

His mouth felt like sandpaper the next time he woke up. The light had been dimmed, and there were no gloved hands trying to pin him down.

Good.

“Who are you?” he asked gruffly, voice dry and cracking like broken shards of glass. The soft, feminine chuckle that answered him made him frown.

Where was he? What was going on? Had he been captured? What mission had he been doing before this? Whatever _this_ was?

“Keen senses, I see.”

“It comes with the job, fortunately.” His eyes leered toward the petite brunette that had just appeared in his peripheral vision. Part Asian for sure, judging from her physique and certain facial features.

What didn’t fit was the clear, cut glass blue eyes that seemed almost mechanical.

“I suppose it does,” she agreed, gently reaching up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “You are certainly more than I have imagined, I must admit, 007.”

Bond shot her a quizzical look; the restraints around his wrists, ankles, and torso were tight. “What else could you have expected from me?”

“Those are to keep you from thrashing,” the woman said abruptly, calmly. If Bond had been surprised by that comment, he didn’t show it outwardly. She smiled. “Not to restrain you, Mr. Bond.”

Her heels clicked on the floor when she approached, just barely so, and she was wearing black blazer with a matching pencil skirt—the attire of a businesswoman. The air around her was business-like as well, down to the tone of voice.

What was going on?

“And to answer your last question, it is merely that we have forgotten the capability of a Double-oh agent.”

So far, to Bond, she was not making sense.

“What about the one before that?” He was referring to the first inquiry he had thrown her way on the seventh second into his first true and proper awakening.

“Oh yes. You can call me M, 007.”

Bond paused before scoffing, “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

“I do, actually.” She sounded firm and calm enough that it made his skin crawl. “I’m the second M after Gareth Mallory, or the third after Olivia Mansfield.”

Silence.

“Pardon?” Was the woman insane?

“You’ve been in an induced sleep for 127 years, 007.”

“What—?”

“Look down at yourself.” He stared at her. “Look down at yourself,” she repeated in a more forceful voice.

The part of the bed under his torso was raised, Bond’s stomach clenched when he saw a sharp metallic gleam over on his right side. But that was nothing compared to the utter paralysis that overcame him when it dawned upon Bond that his entire right arm _was_ the metal gleam his eyes caught—his arm (skin, flesh, blood, and bone) had been replaced by something foreign, something metal and mechanical, wires and man-made. . . .

Then, the woman reached out to pull away the thin, white-washed blanket that had been covering his lower body to reveal a set of legs that was exactly in the same design as that of his arm.

His eyes were wide, and Bond wasn’t consciously sure that he was still drawing in air into his lungs anymore.

That beeping was ringing in the air again. It was his spiking heart rate.

“It’s just your right arm and legs, 007,” the woman, M (?), spoke up once more, sounding as though she was discussing the weather. “Although we did inject a serum to help enable your body’s survival and maintenance even this long into the future.”

127 years, her words came back to him. 127 years.

This . . . this could _not_ be. It was impossible.

Moneypenny, Tanner, Mallory . . . Q. . . .

“Mr. Bond.” It was that woman again. His eyes snapped up to her, jaws grinding against one another. But from this angle and the slightly more shortened proximity between them, not enough to invade into neither one’s personal space, he could see the tiredness haunting those electric blue eyes.

From this angle, those eyes, out of place as they had been initially, didn’t look natural at all.

“Mr. Bond,” she iterated. “Please, keep calm.”

The neutral, collected words, with a hint of steel in them, somehow managed to penetrate his wildly spinning mind, and Bond swallowed down the bile rising up his throat with a shaky breath.

The heart monitor's erratic _beeping_ eased along with him.

“Very good, Mr. Bond.”

He shot her a glare.

“How do I know you’re really who you say you are?”

“You don’t,” was her immediate answer. “I guess you’ll have to trust me.”

“I don’t,” he quipped.

“You will learn, sooner or later.”

 

* * *

 

_**Entry 3** _

 

“Why?”

Bond flexed his fingers and toes experimentally after the restraints had been lifted. They were in perfect function; nothing seemed out of place.

And yet he had mechanical parts for an arm and two legs.

They were smart enough not to leave anything sharp or potentially lethal around him.

He kept his eyes trained on the young man that had just bustled in to replace the I-claim-myself-to-be-M woman from before. His eyes were green, but their shades, the hair, complexion, body posture and build were all wrong. Not to mention he didn’t have any glasses on.

Said young man had introduced himself as Gabriel O’Connor, M’s secretary.

“Why you end up like this, or why you end up where you are?” O’Connor asked.

“Aren’t they just one extended question overall?”

O’Connor had the audacity to smile.

“Since you’re classified as a late model Cyborg in our current time—” The corner of Bond’s mouth twitched. “—we’re going to use this method to make sure you receive the most genuine series of memories possible. That is your _own_ memory that we have recorded, encoded, and programed into a visual file. Audio included, of course.”

O’Connor was fumbling with an odd-looking helmet that couldn’t possibly be a normal helmet. At the push of a button, a few lights went on, and just like that, another small chip was inserted into the back before the young man handed it over to him along with a small cup, which contained a couple millimetres of some sort of substance.

“VAM-501 helps you watch the visual file, and the drug is to keep you from going into involuntary shock,” O’Connor prompted when Bond didn’t motion to take the helmet off his hand, paused a little, then continued, “Q-branch developed the first prototypes of the VAMs themselves.”

The statement was, obviously, deliberate.

Bond didn’t flinch.

“What happened to Q-branch then?” he asked instead, but did reach out for that device (whatever its name was) this time round.

“We disbanded it.” With that O’Connor turned on his heel. “I’ll be back later to collect the equipment and answer any questions of yours. Everything, of course, is entirely up to your own choosing.”

And the door clicked closed behind him.

“Bastard.” As if there were much of a choice to make.

 

* * *

 

_**Entry 4** _

 

There had been a mission in Baghdad, and 007 had been dispatched to back up an already undercover agent as they work to infiltrate an arms trade.

Needless to say, things went south, very quickly at that even, and a bomb went off.

With the memory practically reinjected into his brain, Bond suddenly understood the shock-prevention drug. Without it, he probably would have gone into hyperventilation, and that wouldn’t make much of a good sight, now, would it? Especially in front of these people. Never.

He remembered the pain (burning, searing, choking), the deafening ring (loud, too loud) that bounced against his skull after he had collapsed to the ground—being too close to the explosion at the time as he had been while trying to drag their bloody operatives out of the way—the smoke, the suffocation . . . everything.

Another detail that he remembered was this: Q had been monitoring the whole thing.

_“007, report. 007. 007!”_

A muttered curse.

_“James? James. Are you there? Answer me, damn it! James!”_

Pause.

_“James!”_

 

* * *

 

**_Entry 5_ **

“Do you have any idea how much one of these costs?” O’Connor asked, a busted VAM whatever in his hand.

“Frankly, I don’t,” Bond replied, his face straight if not stony.

Not that they made him pay for it anyway.

 

* * *

 

_**Entry 6** _

 

“So nobody from my time is alive then?”

O’Connor gave him a look that made Bond raise his eyebrow, before saying, “Yes.”

 

* * *

 

_**Entry 7** _

 

They gave him passes to go to certain parts of the building, and Bond quickly figured out that this really was MI6 because while many features were renovated, improved, or removed, some of them remained where they had been, mostly as he knew them to be.

Like that blasted, ugly bulldog which sat stationed upon M’s desk. That, and the sort of vintage décor and layout from time of centuries past in certain rooms and sections of the building.

“It gives the office a more formal feeling to it,” was what the current M said when she saw his eyes wandering about. Sometimes, he wondered if she could read mind, if that were a normal thing for people of this day and age, but he dismissed the thought quickly enough—the inquiries of his questioning mind shouldn’t be too unpredictable for someone who had literally been shoved more than one hundred years into the future.

 _127 years_ , a voice would sometimes whisper to him. As if he needed much of a reminder of the fact.

“You’re watching me,” Bond commented offhandedly.

“I am,” M deadpanned; she hadn’t even looked up from her floating, transparent screen.

“Afraid I may kill myself?” He raised an eyebrow, slightly amused despite himself.

“Depends on how you look at it.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“That’s all I’m giving you right now.”

Even though she smiled more than the previous M’s he had had the (dis)pleasure of working with, the woman still had that razor sharp, freezing edge to her that most of them, everyone who took up this post and sat in that chair, possessed and should have. Good.

“What do you expect me to do now?”

“Practice until you know how to control the force you’re wielding.”

Bond flexed his right arm. “I’m perfectly capable of that.”

“And you accidentally crushed one of our VAM-501’s.”

Bond thought he should’ve known the bloody helmet would come back to haunt him, and shot her a challenging look, which she mirrored and shot exactly right back at him with her engineered eyes.

“You can do whatever you want after you can hold an egg without breaking it and make sure you won’t unintentionally become a threat to general society.”

The man scoffed. _“A threat to general society.”_ What a joke.

 

* * *

 

_**Entry 8** _

 

It was when he was testing out the ‘Skin Change’ mode installed in the walls that he noticed all of his suits were impeccably tailored in the materials and colours that he savoured as well.

Not to mention the straight edge shaving kit tucked neatly away in the bathroom.

 

* * *

 

_**Entry 9** _

 

The flashes of dark, wavy curls and striking green eyes fluttered behind his closed eyelids more often than not in his sleep. And Bond sometimes woke up to his left hand grasping blindly at air in the shadows amidst the dead of night, searching for that familiar planes of smooth skin, sharp angles, and skinny edges, along with the melody that kept ringing in his skull.

_“James!”_

None of that was there. Not anymore.

 

* * *

 

_**Entry 10** _

 

Of course a machine got 10 out of 10 shots.

Bond got 8, and he was pissed.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Bond,” Cordelia Fernandez took out her earmuffs after turning off the robot he had been competing against, and smiled at him. She was beautiful, but that didn’t help. “You did well for someone who is still new at this. It’ll only become better as time wears on.”

He snorted. “You don’t need to comfort me.” Bond couldn’t help the bitter, angry note that seeped into his tone. He _had_ been bitter and angry for a while now, he realized, whether he wanted to admit that or not.

“I’m not.” She shrugged. “I’m stating facts here, and these androids are especially made for aiming and many other purposes if need be.”

Androids. Right.

His eyes darted over to the lifeless r—android, looking at the films that had come to cover over its eyes on that too human-like head on a too human-like body. He would have been fooled if it hadn’t been for the tiny portals at the back of its head.

“They look human, but can they behave like one?” The question fell from his lips out of nowhere.

“Only as programed,” Cordelia replied. “We haven’t been able to manage that just yet. There are still complications that prevent us from achieving that goal.”

He frowned, thinking that she had placed too much stress on the word ‘we’ for it to be good.

“Has someone else managed it, though?”

She ceased at what she had been doing and gave him a long look. “Only one.” Her answer was slow and careful.

Bond raised an eyebrow. Who could that one person be? “Why don’t you make him or her an offer then?” Curiosity was the rising tide inside of him, and he hated the fact that he couldn’t really help it. Old habits of an ‘obsolete’ agent or something of the likes.

“We did. He refused it based on moral grounds.”

“Moral grounds?”

“Yes. He said that if androids could think, behave, and feel as humans do, then what was the difference between sending real field agents, such as the Double-Ohs, to do the deeds and sending androids in their steads?”

Bond blinked. He hadn’t thought about it like that.

“I see . . .” He nodded. “I’m surprised you’d use the Double-Oh Programme as an example, though.” People from this time tended to use the general term ‘A-police’ or 'mechanical law inforcement' as he had noticed.

“I was only rephrasing his words.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and he was only growing more and more intrigued. His programme had been top secret, not just anyone could learn about its existence.

“How did he know about the Double-Ohs then?”

“Oh . . .” Cordelia breathed. “He did work for us. Just didn’t help with that certain issue. The man made a lot of contributions to technology, design, and medicine overall.”

“Sounds like a great man,” Bond mused absentmindedly.

“He was.” Cordelia nodded, appearing a little distant for a moment, her eyes trailing over to him for a fraction of a second there. She pursed her lips with a heavy sigh—the kind of sigh that just rolled out from her lungs as though it had been perching there for the longest of time with a sort of unfathomable, invisible weight crushing down on top of it—before turning to face him fully, placing a hand on his prosthetic right arm, and said, “He helped design this and your legs for you.”

Her voice quavered just for a bit there, and it was enough to irk him.

“He did?” Bond raised an eyebrow, highly interested now. “Who—. . .”

“Mrs. Fernandez?” O’Connor chose that moment to poke in, sucking the topic away from the air, and Bond honestly had never been so annoyed at him as much as he did right then. “May I speak with you for a moment?”

“Sure,” Cordelia pulled away, and he suddenly understood that the conversation they had just had, did not take place. Not at all.

“I’ll excuse myself then,” Bond muttered, returning the gun because he knew he couldn’t very well smuggle a tagged gun out of this room, and turned on his heel.

“Oh, Mr. Bond?” Cordelia called. “The shower is down the hall on the right unless you prefer the one adjacent to your rooms.”

Down the hall on the right. “Thank you.” He spared her a nod of courtesy and continued on his way. Aside from competing against a robot to show off his marksmanship, Bond had been doing other exercises as well, so supposed he needed that shower at any rate.

.

Bond was standing under the streaming shower head, head pressed against the warm tiles, when he heard it—that tune.

For a moment, he just stood there with a frown that grew increasingly intense on his brows, trying to wrack his brain and think of _why_ it was so bloody familiar and _where_ he had heard it before.

He knew, for a fact, that he had heard that tune before.

He had. He had. He had.

He had.

_“One of my favourites, I suppose.”_

_A shrug of the shoulder. A smile—shy, but just on the right side of proud enjoyment. Brilliant green eyes._

_“I like it. What is it called?”_

_“Clair de Lune.”_

And his lungs stuttered.

.

The melody came from somewhere far off; a long, long way down the hall. He couldn’t quite pinpoint where, though, because all sound rang in the confining space down here in this section of the building, and that could be extremely distracting and frustrating.

Bond cursed under his breath and could only hope that the music would not stop suddenly, otherwise, there was no way he was going to find its source then.

But the notes continued, continuing and echoing along the corridors, brushing along the walls, caressing his skin, and waltzing across his senses.

They made his left hand twitch, and Bond didn’t understand why—why his heart ached so; and why his throat tightened painfully as his feet rushed faster and faster, hunting for that sound with a thirst and yearning that seemed almost primal and instinctual.

He was close, nearly there, Bond could tell—the piano was growing louder and louder, after all—and he was becoming desperate enough that his head started to feel lightheaded somewhat, heart constricting a withering rhythm.

And he stopped, cold sweat breaking over his skin: there was a room at the end of the short hall on his left, and Bond knew for a fact that _this_ was it. This was what he had been looking for.

His steps were heavy as he staggered toward it, that room with its heavy, closed, impenetrable-looking door, and like how the music had crept upon him before, Bond could feel the feather light hands of trepidation sneaking up along his spine, her nails sinking into his flesh, punctuating through skin, as her soft breaths curled around and clung to his neck like a noose.

Somehow, he dreaded what he would see there. He dreaded to see what that room held, and his toes curled. God, he couldn’t quite remember the last time he had felt like turning back and running away so much; he really couldn’t.

Goosebumps crawled, and Bond thought he could hear voices and running footsteps in the far distance just as he swallowed and closed his eyes, taking his one final, steadying breath before peering in through the small panel of glass on that thick metal door.

Various electronics littered on top the large island in the middle of the room. The light was white and glaring, and everything seemed so sterile that Bond could feel the pupils of his eyes constricted, fighting to adjust.

The rushing footsteps were not too far off anymore.

Oddly, there was a gramophone sitting on a working bench in the corner. A relic from the past as it was, and the music, undoubtedly, was coming from there, its vinyl disk spinning round and round.

However, that was not the only relic of the past in the room.

Perching next to it was a figure (thin, lithe, and wiry), legs swinging softly along with the tune, hair dark and messy as its strayed strands dangled coyly in the air.

“Mr. Bond! Mr. Bond!”

Glasses caught the bright light and reflected it back, those green eyes (brilliant, striking, and beautiful), seemingly noticing the commotion, looked up at him for a long moment, curiosity glinting like gem.

But there was no recognition there whatsoever. None at all.

And Bond was abruptly yanked back, hands on his body holding him back and tearing his eyes away from what, _who_ , he wanted to see most right then.

“Q.” Distantly, he realized it was him who was shouting and thrashing to lunge forward. “Q!”

_“Q!!!”_


	3. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Do you remember when we first met? I thought I had wandered into a dream."_
> 
> —J. R. R. Tolkien
> 
> -
> 
> As frustration and doubt (and perhaps something akin to fear) begin to sink in, questions arise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** still unbeta-ed. All faults are my own.
> 
> Enjoy, everyone!

_**Part 2** _

* * *

 

_**One.** _

 

Bond stared at himself, the magnification adjustment mode allowing him to see the small words engraved on his arm: _James Bond. 007._

 _“There was an attack.”_ M’s voice rang inside his mind, a hint of emotion for the first time since he opened his eyes to this world that simply wasn’t his own. She was reluctant to tell the story at first, but she had to. He would have killed someone if she hadn’t done exactly just that.

_“A miniature bomb burst right at the reception on ground floor . . . It was a specific attack because there was nanotech in the gas, one designed to corrupt mechanical systems. It stopped the drive from rebooting itself or shutting down properly to prevent damages. After that they just sort of destroyed his chips . . . or tried to anyway.”_

The doors of the closet opened, and Bond stared at the tailored suits inside, hands running through the materials, caressing the ties, the shoes, and everything that had once, he knew, been lovingly placed in here one by one.

 _“We captured them. They were just a radical group upset with Q for not helping others to become like him, a persocom. They were obsessed with the idea of being immortal, fleshing from one body to another.”_ M had shaken her head, now he understood the tiredness that haunted her gaze. _“It was madness and greed. It still is.”_

He went into the bathroom next and took out the straight edge shaving kit, the blade gleaming cold and lethal under the steady light.

And as he held the razor in his hand, Bond thought that he should have known. He should have known since the start.

How else could anyone have prepared all this for him?

 _“We tried to fix him . . . we really did. But there was nothing we could,_ can _, do. He was the only persocom in the world, and Q had never passed on that knowledge to anyone else.”_

 _Moral grounds._ He recalled what Cordelia had said at the range. _What was the difference between sending a machine with feelings to do field work and sending a Double-oh agent?_

_“We salvaged what we could.”_

He could not forget the void of those green eyes as they peered curiously at him, familiar but foreign at the same time, as though he was nothing more than an interesting spectacle to behold.

Bond swallowed thickly and set the razor down before the mechanical force of his right hand accidentally bend or destroy it.

_“And we replaced the damaged parts with the next best things: android parts.”_

Squeezing his eyes shut, he felt like everything was spinning out of his grasps, threatening to spill at the seams. And he couldn’t really tell whether that referred to the situation he was in, or he himself. Not anymore.

_“Everything is wiped.”_

M’s face had been grim, the most emotion he had ever seen her exhibit in the short span of time he had spent here, but with feral pain searing inside his chest, he hadn’t paid it any mind and still lashed out at her.

He hadn’t, didn’t, known what else to do, the claws of loss tearing whatever was left of him into pitiful shreds.

 _“Do you really think that I_ revel _in this? He was one of the best technical developers we’ve ever had, 127 years or no! I don’t enjoy this anymore than you do, 007!”_

_“Stop it.”_

_“What? What now?”_

_“Stop referring to him using past tense. He’s not dead yet.”_ And M had stared at him as though he had gone mad. _“Just stop it.”_

Bond slid down onto the floor, his body shaking as he tried to suck air into his lungs.

So what if he had gone mad? It didn’t matter. As long as remnants of Q was still there . . .

As long as pieces of him were still there, no matter how small and little, Bond wouldn’t give up. He wouldn’t.

127 years of waiting. He drew in a sharp intake of breath.

No, he would rather be dead than to throw it all away.

 

* * *

 

_**Two.** _

 

“Go get yourself one more jacket or something, you fool,” Bond whispered in vain, almost desperate as he sat there and watched as the CCTV footage played before his eyes.

2018 – One year, three months, nineteen days after the bombing: the temperature outside was 8 degrees Celsius, and inside the ‘Preservation’ Room, it was 0.

 _“Q,”_ Moneypenny’s voice spoke up. The young man snapped up to look at her, his eyes trailing to the lower left corner of the screen. _“Are you sure it’s—. . .”_

 _“Just for a little bit,”_ he reassured her. _“It won’t hurt. Nothing will happen to him.”_

Quiet. _“I was talking about you,"_ she murmured.

Q paused before saying, _“I’ll be fine.”_

Bond stared. Liar.

Q had always hated the cold, or any extreme weather, for that matter.

The door of the capsule opened, thick mist came oozing out of it, dispersing into the air. Q tried to suppress his shiver, but Bond’s eyes were sharp, and MI6’s surveillance recording had always been of good quality, so of course he had seen it. Crystal clear.

Still, the younger man reached out and touched his left hand, caressing it softly as though it hadn’t felt like frozen ice beneath those bony fingertips.

2020 – Three years, seven months, twenty-one days after the bombing: 3 AM, Q was sitting in Q-branch tweaking away. It was Christmas.

 _“Are you tired of_ Clair de Lune _yet, James?”_ Q laughed mirthlessly.

No. No, Q. Never.

 _“I . . . I never got to ask you which other one you like.”_ Q wiped at his eyes. _“I never got to ask what sort of music you like.”_

2026 – Nine years, one month, thirteen days after the bombing: Q’s hair had thinned, losing its downy, tousled look and growing increasingly grey.

 _“You don’t have to do this anymore, Q. It’s . . .”_ Moneypenny stopped short of what she was saying. She looked strained and tired herself. _“You don’t have to continue doing this.”_

 _“How could you say that?”_ Q snarled, suddenly becoming very defensive. _“Of course I have to do this! I_ want _to do this. His heart is still beating! It has never stopped!”_

Moneypenny retreated; she had to, and honestly, Bond didn’t blame her for saying that. It had to be done.

Later on that night, Q crept down to what had been deemed as Bond’s room and opened the capsule.

He cried—the shivering layers that he had tried so hard to keep wrapped around that thin, frail frame of his, unravelled like withering flower petals.

 _“I thought of walking away before, James. I thought that maybe I could try and—. . . . But it’s just . . . it isn’t the same. I can’t do it. Even though I think I’m forgetting your voice, the exact shade of your eyes, you silly laugh, I just can’t.”_ Q’s tiny voice cracked, fraying around the edges.

Bond felt like he couldn’t breathe.

_“I know Eve meant well . . . but I-I lashed out because . . . because I did try considering that, and I’m . . . Just the mere thought of it makes me feel so horrible. I’m sorry, James. I’m so sorry. Please, don’t hate me?”_

Q was clutching Bond’s left hand again until his nails turned blue, and Bond cursed aloud because this was raw pain that he couldn’t possibly, hadn’t been able to, soothe away.

_“Please?”_

 

* * *

 

 _**Three.** _ _  
_

 

“They didn’t mean to hide it from you, you know.”

Bond raised an eyebrow at Cordelia, who had the audacity to blush.

“Well, they did, but not in that sort way.” She sipped at her juice while he continued to drink his hot coffee too fast, the black liquid scalding his tongue. “We knew that there might be a chance he wouldn’t . . .” She paused, pursing her lips, eyelashes fluttering rapidly. “So they generally believed that it would be better overall if you thought that there was no one left from your time.”

Bond was quiet for a moment and said, “You directed me to that shower room on purpose.”

She nodded instead of denying any of it. “Because I think he deserves at least that much after 127 years.”

The sky was grey outside beyond the layer of glass, and he sighed.

Yes, Q deserved at least that much and a whole lot more.

 

* * *

 

_**Four.** _

 

“We are still adding programs to his functions,” O’Connor said, clicking a button on that pocket projector of his as the transparent slides flipped from one to another.

They were heading to Q’s room.

Bond uttered a noncommittal grunt, not sparing much care to anything past the need of having a proper reunion with Q.

“You know, Mr. Bond.” O’Connor tucked the device away at last, and the foreign note in his otherwise neutral voice drew Bond’s attention. “If it gets too difficult . . . no one would blame you if you were to walk away.”

Bond stopped in his track. “Look, I know you mean well.” He didn’t look very impressed, and his words showed it. “But please, I want this to remain between me and him, so save your speculations, especially when nothing has yet to even start.”

O’Connor’s hands were in his pockets, and they stood there, quiet and motionless, for a long while before the young man let out a soft laugh, shaking his head, and the expression itself was a strange thing as well that he had never witnessed, not before this. “I suppose I’m starting to see why you are so special to him.”

Bond gave him a questioning look.

“I was his protégé, Mr. Bond, before the attack. He never told me much, but I can make some deductions of my own.” And O’Connor gave a small, sad, but understanding smile.

.

O’Connor left after powering Q up, once again going through the few notes of reminders, being the borderline perfectionist that he was.

 _“For the first few seconds upon wakening, his eyes will blink at a mismatched pace to one another.”_ There was that distinct do-not-freak-out look in O’Connor’s features that made Bond scoff. Honestly, he had seen people’s brain and innards spatter on bloody floors before; how could this be any worse?

_“We haven’t finished installing all the available programs for him. Including facial recognition.”_

Those eyelashes began to flutter, opening for a sliver, revealing the green orbs hiding behind them.

 _“You told me this already, O’Connor . . . but why?”_ Why hadn’t they installed everything? Why facial recognition in the first place?

They did start blinking in mismatched rhythm the first few times, but Bond continued observing calmly and intently without showing any discomfort at all.

_“Because his core system doesn’t accept everything we feed it.”_

_“You’re saying that his . . . system is selective then?”_

_“Yes. It is selective.”_

Bond sucked in a breath because the green pools were the exact shade he remembered them to be.

There was no 127 years of waiting for him after all . . . Technically, to him, to his internal clock and to his own personal time frame, he had only just seen Q in the flesh more than half a day before he had been ‘officially’ woken up from his century-long slumber in the capsule.

Technically, it was only sixteen hours and twenty-nine minutes to him from the bombing to that time he had been brought back to the real world weeks ago.

_“Why? How?”_

_“We don’t know. Whatever parts that haven’t been destroyed by the nanotech are protected by advanced layers of complex algorithms and banks of personally developed damage control measures. We haven’t been able to crack all of them.”_

He could see the small cameras installed deep in those dark pupils zooming in and focusing on to him.

Bond reached out and brushed his fingers along Q’s cheek, his touches soft and suddenly hesitant under that watchful, curious gaze that seemed to be _prodding_ at him to see as though testing to see what, _who_ , this was.

_He doesn’t know who you are._

“Hello, William,” Bond whispered, the young man’s skin cool like the temperature of the room, soft and pliable and resembling true human skin under the rough pads of his fingertips.

Q blinked, both lashes in synchronization this time round, before breaking into a small smile that twisted his gut.

“James.”

 

* * *

 

_**Five.** _

 

“Do you have the key to his flat?” O’Connor was quiet for a while, long enough for Bond to follow that up with another question: “His flat is still there right?” He was growing rather sceptical of this, seeing as the last time he came back from disappearing off the grid for a mere couple of months, he didn’t have a place left to go back to.

“He still does, Mr. Bond,” O’Connor grumbled, exasperated, yes, but not annoyed. “Please, give me a moment to search for it.”

It did take only a moment, and when the young man pressed the piece of metal into his palm, Bond stared at it, the little thing weighing so much more than it should.

It was still the very same key that he had held himself more than once, supposedly 127 years ago—127 years before his life was flipped upside down into its current state.

It was still the same, after all this time.

“Thank you,” he whispered and left.

 

* * *

 

_**Six.** _

 

“James. Stay. No. I said stay, James. No, wait. Don’t—!”

But it was too late, the cat had already jumped up into his lap, gave himself a triple twirl, before settling down and getting hair all over Bond’s trousers. The man tipped his head back with a sigh and a stifled roll of the eyes.

Q edged closer and crouched down just enough so he could touch James and started petting the purring cat.

It was a white Turkish Angora that Bond had bought for Q on their way back home, back to Q’s flat that had remained pretty much unchanged according to his memory.

Apparently, as it turned out, the only word that Q would ever say was “James.” And Bond honestly didn’t know whether he should feel pleased or despair over it. Maybe a little bit of both, he supposed.

James looked up lazily at Q with a soft meow before standing up and hopping back to the floor, successfully and effortlessly drawing Q’s apparent attention away.

_“James. James.”_

_Bond blinked, still feeling a little surprised to hear his name slipping out from between those lips so easily._

_Q was looking at a cat with long, white fur and quite striking, big blue eyes._

_“James,” he was calling it, and Bond reckoned they had found what they came here for._

_“We’ll be buying that cat. Thank you,” he turned and told the cashier, who was sending odd looks toward Q._

_“Your android, sir?” she asked in a casual, conversational tone that sharpened his eyes fractionally._

_“Is something the matter?” Bond asked, a hint of cold steel in his voice despite the charming overcoat._

_“Oh, no. Of course not,” she, Catherine, laughed. “It’s just that, if he’s malfunctioned, there’s a shop nearby that you can—. . .”_

_“He’s perfectly fine.”_

Bond’s lip curled at the memory as he watched Q play with his new cat. Malfunctioned, what a joke.

There was nothing wrong with Q, and anyone who said otherwise would have to go through him first.

“Come on.” Bond stood up, brushing down the cat hair to no avail and made a joking note to himself that it was wise to start investing in rolling pints again, not being used to the fact that they now had wardrobes smart enough to generally do a thing such as getting cat hair off his clothes. “Time for bed.” _Or time for shutdown_ , a voice whispered viciously, and he swatted it away.

Once he had plugged Q into the charging station as instructed, Bond turned back to James, who sat on the floor next to his feet.

“You,” he said in a disapproving, reprimanding tone, “be nicer to him.”

Of course, he knew the only reason why Q was so drawn to the cat, aside from him just being born the right species of interest, was because of those blue eyes. Hence the name James in the first place.

James meowed, and Bond tried not to focus too hard on how lifeless Q seemed right then, encapsulated in the charging station with its eerily glowing white light.

 

* * *

 

_**Seven.** _

 

 _“How’s he doing?”_ O’Connor asked.

“Fine.” As fine as he could be anyway. Bond turned the camera over, one hand holding on to his mug of coffee, to where Q was using a feather cat toy to play with James.

 _“Any improvement?”_ It was Cordelia’s turn now, and he shook his head.

For a moment there, silence lapsed, Bond swirled his coffee before piquing up, “What about scratch marks on Q’s skin? Anything we can do about them?”

It was a habitual thing, but Bond never called Q by his first name in front of anyone but just themselves, even though he knew it must have been a rather ridiculous practice, considering that these people might or might not have read Q’s files already.

Even so, “William” stayed between the two of them like a snugly warm little secret, and Bond wanted no one else to call Q as such. No one but him.

Maybe it was just his way of distinguishing himself from all the other countless faces that Q had met and would meet, with or without his facial recognition program.

 _“Uh . . .”_ O’Connor shrugged. _“Androids— Ow!”_ Cordelia jabbed him in the ribs. _“Sorry. His skin doesn’t heal, so there’s no other choice but to leave it be like that.”_

“I see.” Bond nodded, his eyes flickering back to the playing pair until James got a little aggressive with trying to keep up with the toy (and Q a little careless) that he accidentally swiped his claws at Q’s hand. Again.

“Hey, hey!” Bond put down his mug on the counter, entirely ignoring that they were having company, and rushed over out of instincts. He snatched Q’s hand into his own, keen eyes watching over the marks before suddenly realizing that the scratches weren’t turning into welts or swelling at all.

Bond had forgotten, for a second there, that the young man couldn’t, _didn’t_ , feel or comprehend the sense of pain anymore.

Nevertheless, he let out a sigh of relief, an odd sense of emptiness swirling inside his chest with his spreading tendrils. “You’re okay,” he said with a small smile, chuckling softly upon seeing both Q and James blink owlishly up at him as though neither understood what all the ruckus was all about.

Silently, Cordelia left a goodbye message and logged off with O’Connor.

 

* * *

 

_**Eight.** _

 

Honestly? It was much easier to guess what of his wasn’t in here than what was.

They weren’t put on display, but they were there, absolutely, tucked away in the walk-in wardrobe, everything so neatly arranged and well-kept they didn’t look like they were more than a century old.

Bond swallowed with difficulty, eyes gliding over the somewhat dusty trinkets (the cheesy, idiotic trinkets he had made a habit of buying for Q whenever he could on a mission either for the effect of annoyance or humour) before screwing them shut.

Outside, Q must still be wordlessly playing with their cat, and the man chewed on the insides of his cheeks, fists clenching, as he took in a sharp intake of air.

Was it even Q anymore?

The very moment that question formed, Bond could have slapped himself.

Maybe he should’ve done precisely just that.

 

* * *

 

_**Nine.** _

 

Bond was beside himself with rage. He was so angry he couldn’t even speak—something that hadn’t happened for a long, long time already.

And the sight of the mangled Tuk Tuk on the floor only made it worse as he gritted his teeth in a sort of last-resort attempt at trying to keep calm.

Damn it, it had been one of the trinkets from Thailand that he had bought for—. . .

Q just stood there, peering at him with that familiar expression, yet so strange at the same time that it could have been surreal if he hadn’t been so furious.

“Just—. . .” James cleared his throat, breath catching a little. “Just step out, William.”

“James.”

“Please.”

Three seconds later, the doors to the wardrobe closed.

 

* * *

 

_**Ten.** _

 

Sometimes, night was the most difficult time.

(Since when had it not been, really?)

Lately, Bond had not been able to resist the urge to go over to the build-in charging system where Q lay, and just _stared_.

He scrambled, irrationally, almost desperately, in search for some sort of sign. Just some signs of life.

But there was none.

No breathing, no pulse, no heat on the skin, not even a flutter of the eyelash—mismatched or no.

Nothing whatsoever.

And that scared Bond.

Why?

Because, increasingly, he couldn’t quite tell if this was Q anymore, _his_ Q (intelligent, witty, sometimes egotistical, but kind and caring, warm, and so... so alive…) and not just an empty machine that happened to look like him.

.

Sometimes, he wished they had never woken him up.

He really, truly wished they hadn’t.


End file.
